Sleight of Hand
by Queria
Summary: You - you are my one act of defiance. Now that I think about it, I could've been yours, too. Masako-centric. Slight J/M.


**A/N: I don't know what happened. There.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Ghost Hunt. I have never owned Ghost Hunt.**

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I don't recall meeting you to be something special.

In fact, I don't even remember the exact scene - can't draw the picture, only snippets, like doodles on sand. Water and time washed away the beach, leaving me to wonder how all this ever started - how we even started.

Perhaps I ought to have given you more attention, looked at you a little more closely, paid you more mind than just a little overlooking glance. But Oliver was there. Oliver was my blinding light.

Oliver has always blinded me.

I never told you this, but my mother always coaxed me into keeping out for great men. To be fair, she never said the words aloud, never broke the metaphorical ice, never bothered to actually say it - she didn't tell me to go fishing for businessmen and CEOs, but I know how to read her like an open book through deceptively warm smiles and meaningful glances. I know why she's been taking me to corporate dinners, decked in the most expensive kimono she picked out herself, introducing me to older, powerful men who just happened to have sons.

My family wasn't exactly known for being contemporary-minded. I don't recall telling you this, either. It's not like you asked. My family still believed in good economic matches, that love wasn't a prerogative. _It's a plus_, she would say. It wasn't the reason. It was a bonus.

In all the times she barely grazed the subject of men, she never told me to look for good ones. Oliver was great. I never bothered to think if he was good. Back then, I didn't even know there was a difference.

I would let my mother pick out my clothes. I wasn't going to let her choose who I marry. It's going to be my choice. It had been Oliver. He was my one act of independence.

When you asked me if I loved him? I probably did, if only because I loved myself, too. Being with Oliver is an achievement - the reminder I needed to reassure myself (fool myself?) that I still have control over my life. That I wasn't already stripped of my freedom.

In the process, the line between loving and loathing myself grew from thin to nearly non-existent. What self-respecting woman would push herself incessantly into the arms of someone who clearly doesn't want her? One who wanted to get, for once, what she wanted.

My one act of independence - and first of self-sabotage.

You - you are my one act of defiance. Now that I think about it, I could've been yours, too.

Remember how naive we were?

You may be a priest, and you may know things people our age don't even bother thinking about, but in the end, we're the same as them - cut from the same stone, made of the same core. We were childish, and immature, and far too hopeful that it's all going to work out.

We were kids. I was only eighteen, and you were barely twenty one.

I was essentially pointing a gun at our feet by asking you to dinner. You were the one who pulled the trigger by accepting. Neither one of us felt the effects until long after.

Back then, I recall doing it to spite Oliver. I knew you knew, too, because you called me out on it mid-spoonful. I remember smirking. You were cleverer than I thought you were.

My plan didn't work (_surprise surprise_) and I couldn't make him any less jealous than I could force out any other emotion off of him. It was a farce doomed to fail.

I broke down after that, and you held me up like a pillar. You were my wingless angel, my marble pillar, my blue-eyed wonder, you.

We continued the charade, because why not? My heart was still holding out for hope despite my mind's constant scolding. Maybe Oliver will realize what he's been missing. Maybe I would start to feel like I'm worth something again. Maybe something would happen that would remind me I'm alive, that I'm human. That I'm not just some doll you can dress up and introduce to strangers who you see as potential business partners. Maybe I'd stop feeling like the abandoned daughter, the poor, fatherless creature everyone only ever treats as either porcelain or a freak of nature.

You made me feel like something when you stood beside me through it all - your presence lingered even when you weren't there - like a fragrant smoke I can't see, but the smell reminds me enough to realize that you're my friend and that I'm not alone.

The wedding invitation came in the mail six weeks later, and none of us even knew they were together. You listened to me cry through the phone, and I couldn't remember a time I yearned to be held by someone as much since my father's car sped off to the distance.

You continued to spend more time with me than the others, and at first, I thought it was out of pity. I still don't know what prompted you to do that, but I'd like to think that you already felt strongly for me as early as that. Because I certainly did. I just didn't know it back then.

You would fetch me from tapings when you didn't have a sermon to preach, and I always pretended I'm not desperately wishing you'd be there when I step out of the studio. Or that I wasn't always pretending to feel unwell just so we could finish early. You weren't there more than you were, but still, my hope was unwavering. I was that dependent on you without even noticing.

We settled into a pattern and both of us refused to acknowledge it. We were scared little children, scared of acknowledging how wrong it was to feel this way for someone who was never supposed to be yours to begin with, scared of finally saying it out loud, afraid that we'd give in, even if we slowly, already have.

I shouldn't have said anything that fateful day. I should've kept my mouth shut. Maybe then you'd still be with me. Now you're gone, and I wish I hadn't said anything, didn't say those three words aloud.

_I'm sorry_, you said, and I remember how broken you looked, thought at that time that maybe, just maybe, I looked like that too. But you know what, I'm even more sorry than you are, because I had hoped. Hoped that it'll be okay, that we'll find a way to get through this, like we did when I lost Oliver. But you loved your God more, and I should have known better than to compete with that.

Sometimes, I still dream of you. I dream of how you smile when you get annoyed, how you like green, how you were scared of cats (even though you would never admit it, I saw you that one time, I did), how you would eat your carrots raw, how you read Shakespeare aloud, how you're eerily quiet when you're mad, how understanding you were, how blue your eyes looked like in the sun. I dream of you tucking a flower in my hair. I dream of your hushed voice telling me someone will love me better than Oliver ever would. I dream of you, I dream of you.

Do you dream of me too?


End file.
